


drop thy still dews of quietness

by anticyclonerollingstone



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, grief and trauma and all that good stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 19:30:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12613792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclonerollingstone/pseuds/anticyclonerollingstone
Summary: Collins closes his burning eyes and listens for Farrier's watch ticking behind him.





	drop thy still dews of quietness

**Author's Note:**

> i've given up on trying for good summaries.
> 
> and also good titles. this one is from the hymn "dear lord and father of mankind."
> 
> this is probably unimpressive and full of errors but oh well. i had to post something.

     Collins shuffles through the station on heavy feet, his eyes burning from salt and fatigue and unshed tears. By now word has undoubtedly gotten around of what happened to him and what likely became of Farrier. He doesn’t want to think of the way the story has been twisted. Word always spreads too quickly through dispersal huts and barracks and hangars. 

    The men he passes look at him as if they’re seeing a ghost or reading some dreadful headline in a newspaper. Maybe they have, Collins thinks, maybe he’s the ghost, or Farrier’s absence from his side is the dreadful headline. No one says a word to him, but they don’t hesitate to stare at him the way they would stare at any other carnage of war. When he does manage to glance at their faces they don’t look away from him. There might be a sympathy in their eyes but Collins can’t see it, can’t focus his eyes enough to detect it.

   The last time he slept was years ago, a lifetime behind him. He's lost count of how many hours it’s been since he pulled himself out of bed with the ice of pre-operation anxiety swirling in his stomach. From that moment, likely a good thirty hours ago now, he’s only caught blinks of sleep. He refused to return to the base at first, throwing himself into use with nurses receiving men off boats. It was all he could think to do, gently talking down empty-eyed soldiers who, in their pain and shock, were unreceptive to nurses and anything else without a serviceman’s voice. 

    Anything was better than being left alone with the ghostly eyes of the men he had left in the water, and anything was better than returning alone, so he made himself useful.

    Just as the sun had been coming up, Collins found himself dozing off in some flimsy chair when a nurse gently woke him and led him to the door, thanking him sincerely for his help but really it’s time he go get some proper rest himself. He had caught a moment of rest when he dropped off waiting for the train. He found a couple of too-conscious hours on the train, during which he never stopped hearing the thrumming of the train on its rails or feeling the warmth of the sun on his face through the window, and never lost the awareness of the absence at his side. 

    Someone had found him early in the morning, before the sun had come up, to quietly tell him a Spitfire had gone down over the perimeter. It could only be Farrier’s, though no one could begin to say it. Collins had nodded and carried on because there was nothing left to do. Farrier wouldn’t be back, he had known it as soon as he realized Farrier wouldn’t turn around for England after Collins had ditched. 

    _Farrier, you cunt,_  Collins thinks, _why didn’t you turn back?_  

    And Collins can hear what would be Farrier's reply, see the somber smile that would glint on his face.

_I’m not here to turn back, Collins._

    _You won’t be of much use alone or dead, Farrier._

    Collins grinds his teeth to end the conversation. He only finds his way to his barracks and his bunk by blind memory.

    The barracks is striped in slanting rays of sun from the windows, falling on the floor between cots. In about two hours the sun will be casting a rectangle of light perfectly onto Collins's own cot. If it were cold outside and they had no other obligations then Farrier would shove Collins over and plant himself in the sun until it moved. Collins would resign himself to sitting on the floor, propped against his own bed to read whatever manual or novel had found its way into his hands. Farrier would close his eyes against the sun, face glittering slightly with stubble, and brush his fingers back and forth through the back of Collins’s hair so long as no one could see. 

    But Farrier isn’t there. 

    No one is there except for Crouch, a younger man with a smart mouth who was regularly placed on cleaning details for belligerence. His arms are full of laundry. He nods at at Collins and Collins nods back. His red hair flickers like fire when he steps toward Collins through one of the sunbeams. 

    “I can get your uniform washed for you if you'd like," Crouch offers, the first words spoken to him since he set foot back at the station. Collins worries the corner of his mouth with his teeth and finally nods, standing up and working numbly at the buttons. Crouch waits patiently and silently, staring past Collins at Farrier’s abandoned bed behind him. 

    _Everyone knows he's gone,_ Collins thinks as he undresses, and it hammers another nail of confirmation into his heart. 

    Distantly Collins wonders what else they might know now that Farrier isn't around to catch wind of it. 

    Collins roughly folds his uniform, pauses, and unfolds it enough to fish a torn half of an old postcard from the breast pocket, sets it down on his blanket. An address is scrawled across the photo side in Peter Dawson’s shaking hurried hand, dark ink over a pastel greeting, and below it the address of the soldier in Collins’s own rushed blocky script. He had stopped before he returned to send word to the soldier’s wife at his request, letting her know her husband was safe again on British soil.  

    Collins folds the uniform again and holds it out to Crouch, who takes it and curiously pinches a dark spot of oil on the cuff between his thumb and forefinger. The oil beads just a bit around the pad of his thumb. He looks up at Collins. 

    “Might just have to get yourself a new one, mate,” Crouch says, and his eyes flicker to Farrier’s bed again before meeting Collins’s straining eyes.

    Collins feels his entire soul rising up in his throat. 

    _It wasn’t like that_ , he thinks, though that isn't what Crouch means. At least he doesn't think so.

    “Thanks,” Collins manages. Crouch nods somberly, glancing back to Farrier's bed one more time before he finally turns away. Collins hears the door shut softly behind him.   

    He shuffles exhaustedly through his belongings, undresses and pulls on the first clean clothes he finds. He's awake enough to be disgusted by his salt-stiff day-old underclothes but too tired to shower the grime and grief away. The last thing he wants to do is be wet again anyway. He had cleaned up in a washroom late in the night - or was it early morning? - and even wetting the cloth he used was enough to turn his stomach. 

    Collins kicks all his things back under the cot. He picks up the half-postcard off the bed. Peter had called for him, voice straining with desperation, as Collins was about to turn away. 

    _Where can I write you?_   Peter had asked, looking like he was finally about to cry after a day no boy should have to live through. Collins didn’t think he could take it if Peter started crying. Collins had pressed at his breast pocket for anything to write with and Peter had leaped back onto the boat, emerging again with a pen and a postcard that he tore in half. He wrote his address on one half and handed the pen to Collins, who wrote his own information on the other half. Collins had seen the way the boy’s father looked at Peter, with faraway eyes that didn’t offer the comfort they likely once had, and Collins couldn’t bear to refuse Peter the comfort of having an address he would likely never write to.

    Collins pulls his bible out from under his bed and tucks the postcard between the last page and the back cover, with the other addresses of his family and friends and somewhere among them the girl he had urged not to wait for him. He puts the bible back under his bed, offers up a silent unfinished prayer of apology for keeping it on the floor. He pauses before he removes his hand from the worn leather binding and tries for an unfinished prayer of contrition and an even less finished prayer for the boys in the Channel.

    Unable to stand or think a moment longer, Collins collapses onto his cot, sighing into the familiar creaking of the frame under his body. His eyes water with the relief at comfort and he realizes how badly his body is aching. He shifts onto his side and pulls the thin covers up to his neck, closes his eyes against the ringing that picks up in his ears the moment the rustling of linens stops, the last noise in a hellish more-than-day, and the silence of the empty barracks is abrupt. 

    Collins tries to focus on any other sound to distract from the ringing. The puttering of planes at the airfield, someone else's snoring, the clinking of and whirring of the industrial ceiling fans. Searching for something constant and focusing on nothing else.

    Collins closes his burning eyes and listens for Farrier's watch ticking behind him. 

    A heavy sob breaks from his chest before he can fully remember that Farrier's watch is gone, and Farrier with it. He grinds his teeth against the wail he can feel rising up in his throat and screws his eyes shut. The ringing turns to screaming as his heart hammers in his head, and he throws back the covers and slides out of bed, fumbling for a uniform. He finds it and drags himself into it frantically. 

    Collins nearly runs out the door, using the last of his energy and all of his panic to get his aching body as far away from Farrier's absence as possible. The other men are still staring at him as he passes, his hands shoved deep in his pockets as he walks with exhausted purpose to wherever his feet are taking him. He doesn't care what anyone sees any more than he cares where he’s going.

    It wouldn't be quite so hard if he had Fortis Leader to clasp his shoulder and let him cry stiffly against the breast of his uniform. But he remembers, and is ashamed by the delay in the realization, that Fortis Leader is even more gone than Farrier. 

    If Farrier were with him he would have pulled him away to some safe corner. He would let Collins would cry and shake in his arms until he couldn't cry any longer and then hold him there until it all subsided. That was what happened the last time that Collins was the only one in a squadron to return, when he’d been called to fill in just once for a recently-killed pilot whose squadron needed to fly and hadn’t been given a replacement yet. Farrier met him with painfully relieved eyes on the tarmac when he landed, caught his arm when Collins finally stumbled away from the post-operation chaos. He had held Collins by the arm, led him into an empty briefing room, and pulled him into a solid embrace. Farrier let Collins cry and mumble into his neck until he whispered that he couldn’t stand any longer and sat them both down against the door, still holding Collins against his chest until Collins finally stopped shaking enough to walk to bed.

    Farrier would tell him he did exactly what he was supposed to, even if meant leaving men in the water, desperate faces covered in oil to be swallowed in flames. 

    _If you hadn’t called for that boat to turn tail we would have lost even more, including you,_  Farrier would say, _including civilians. You were right in all you did out there._

_And you’re one to talk. You didn’t turn around and look where you got yourself. Was that the right thing? Or were you caught up in your romantic fatalism again?_

    Farrier’s voice falls silent in Collins’s mind, as it likely would have if Farrier were still with him.

    _Where did you get yourself after all, Farrier?_

    Collins finds himself at a familiar hangar. It's impersonal enough, and he can pretend the emptiness of it is just due to test flights or maintenance and not his plane being lost in the Channel and Farrier's being an ashy skeleton on the sand. He throws himself down onto a flimsy threadbare sofa pushed against one of the walls and crosses his arms over his chest, tucking his chin into his shoulder and biting his tongue to distract himself from the pain in his chest. Though his heart is still pounding he can feel himself finally, finally slipping desperately into sleep. 

    "Hey, Collins-" someone starts from halfway across the hangar. Someone else cuts him off with a shush. Collins is too tired to open his eyes to see who it is.

    "Let him be," the second person says, and it sounds like Thompson, "Just let him be. He’ll be fine."  

    Collins wants to speak up and thank him for understanding but he doesn’t have the strength for it. The engines running outside and the cranking and clanking of routine maintenance and the rhythms of the conversations of airmen drown out the ringing, drown out the silence Farrier left him with. 

    He finally falls asleep, occasionally woken slightly but not disturbed by the noise of the hangar. When he dreams it’s only glimpses of snarling flames and the sheen of oil and smoking planes hurtling down toward the water, not plunging through the surface before he wakes, and when he wakes it's only just enough to collect himself.

    He dreams, briefly, of Farrier, and his voice and his ticking watch. 

    When Collins wakes up fully, finally rested enough to hold his eyes open, the sky is crisp and light and the air is cool enough to bite his nose just a bit. The weight of a flight jacket holds him against the dusty sofa. He turns and presses his nose into the lining of the collar tucked around his neck. It smells like smoke and sea air, fuel and tobacco, _like Farrier._ Collins blinks hard against the thought and pushes it from his mind, away from his tired heart.  

    He unfolds his legs out from under him and inhales long and slow, every muscle aching dryly.

    “You’re up,” a voice states after he finishes stretching. Collins turns to face it, finding its owner to be Hudson, a quiet man with a loud laugh and a confident gentleness about him. He sits with his feet up on an old desk notorious for being off balance. He closes his book. 

    “I am,” Collins says, voice rough and subdued. Hudson nods, an almost motherly gesture. His eyes hold none of the grief or pity of the other airmen from the day before.

    “We didn’t want to leave you alone in here. It’s just about seven,” Hudson says, his voice still strikingly soft in a way that makes Collins feel equally sick and at ease. “When I came in here they said you’d been out for about eight hours already. Though that was probably six hours ago now."

    Collins curses under his breath and drops his head backward against the sofa. 

    “Don’t worry about it, you’ve got nowhere to be,” Hudson says. “You think you’re up for the day now?”

    “I think so,” Collins says stiffly. The only thing louder in his mind than Farrier’s absence is how badly he wants some water. He pulls the flight jacket off his shoulder and the smell of it flares up into his face. _Like Farrier._ He swallows the thought and holds the jacket numbly in his hands, stiffly refusing to look at it. He doesn’t want to see whose it is any more than he wanted to rouse himself from his fleeting dream of Farrier’s mumbling and his ticking watch. 

    Hudson stands up, tucking his book into the pocket of his flight jacket.

    “Let’s get you something to eat, yeah?” He steps over to Collins and offers him a hand. Collins takes it, warm and steady, and pulls himself up, the flight jacket still held tightly with frustration in his other hand. Hudson gently claps his shoulder and nods, leading Collins patiently back into his stride as he takes his first steps. “They said somebody wants to see you at mess anyway. Probably wants his jacket back.”  

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact! i wrote this entire fic on paper during a seminar in true seventh-grade style.
> 
> catch me on twitter @thehubbins or tumblr @hubbins.


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